Guest Bio: Andrew Tucker is the CEO of ITonCloud which helps businesses simplify and automate their IT systems by leveraging the cloud. Andrew has more than 20 years of experience as a successful business owner and passionate entrepreneur. His goal has always been to build and drive ventures to deliver unmatched service levels, customer value and trust.

Segment overview: In today’s Health Supplier Segment, we are joined by ITonCloud CEO Andrew Tucker here to talk about their cloud computing features. Andrew discusses how cloud computing is enabling the next wave of ehealth innovation. In addition, Andrew explains how cloud computing is driving ehealth innovation in the areas of mobility, data management, self-service for patients, operations and analytics of information for hospitals and private practices.

Wayne Bucklar: You are listening in the Health Professional Radio. My name is Wayne Bucklar and today my guest is Andrew Tucker. Now Andrew is joining me from Sydney in Australia where he is the CEO of IT on Cloud. Andrew, welcome in the Health Professional Radio.

Andrew Tucker: Thank you Wayne, I appreciate it.

W: Now Andrew, IT on Cloud, I can have guess at, but why that you tell us what is you do and where about you do it?

A: Right. We’ve kicked off in the space of cloud offering and it is really it’s around professional services industry so our main focus is around health which is around health aged care. I’ve been in the accounting world and in the … Those are sort of strong verticals that we’ve been and then we do have quite a number of companies that are in the construction world that are fairly large and worldwide based construction companies. What we do, we take all of their IT and we put it into the cloud. Everything from their servers, to the line of business applications, to all the office and email etcetera, that it’s put into our data centers. We have two data centers in Sydney and therefore, everything are reside within the Australian rules and regulations. And really behind that also is that, people know we exist and how and which touch their data. What we do further? We make sure that we deliver full IT services across the board from our data centers to the companies.

W: In the health space Andrew, do you work with large health organizations like aged care homes and hospitals? Or are you more focused on the clinical practice rooms, the GP’s rooms and the physical therapist rooms? Or do you do both in fact?

A: Well, we tend to do work with the larger organizations. But we haven’t procured at the smaller organizations that you’ve mentioned there. Yes, aged cared, we do deal with aged care and larger aged care companies in the country. The big movement around that is that is the … internet of things and big data. So … a little bit more than that is what they’re tending to use now is a lot of devices and a very simple example is in an aged care, say a patient there or an aged person that has a sensor in the bed and if that person normally gets up at 8 o’clock every morning, but it’s now quarter past 8 … and the sensors says that she/he has not risen, it sends off an alert and then obviously a nurse etc. will be dispatched to that person, either at their house or to an aged care unit. The data from that is added up, added up, so on. For the allied health side, we tend to be very prominent in that, we’ve got a large presence in allied health which includes the physiotherapists, and the psychologists and there sort of professionals beside those businesses so it has been more core focused around the large end up to business world in those spaces. So hospitals no, we’re not in any hospitals.

W: Now Andrew, I can hear the squirming of a thousand of my audience who are was saying, ‘Oh my goodness, I can’t put patient data on the cloud.’ What’s your response to that?A: Understand. Well, yes and no, you can’t put patient data on a, well, there’s many different rules but the general concept behind that is, ‘Can you put data on any cloud?’ The answer is no, because it needs to reside in Australia if those patients are with inside Australia. Can it be on a public health? No, because you don’t really know where it’s going to be and you don’t have any control over it. We’re here, me meet all the criteria around the security, the privacy and all the rules and regulations that reside around… Is it safer? It’s a lot safer than actual residing an on premise servers. We can get into that a little bit later …

W: You’ve been in this business for a while Andrew. What’s your prediction about the adoption of e-health in the health sector? Is it, if we all hear about e-health but is it happening full steam ahead?

A: In those particular sectors especially on the … they’re moving very quickly. Allied health, their acceleration into the cloud has been almost full steam ahead. Aged cares, a little bit so, but now … see the benefits of all the different technologies in a way that they can service their patients and all their clients a lot of better. They’ve started to see that this is a really exciting area to go into and differentiate it so that is to accelerate as well. The growth ball in both on IT and in their own growth has been huge so I predict that this is an area of great excitement.

W: I have spoken to some IT people in the health space who tell me that they think particularly in aged care with the cost model that much more dramatic use of IT in providing resident care is inevitable to get a cost model that will work into the future as numbers go up of course.

A: That is just a, I see that is, yes a tick in a box and you should really look cloud as a platform for launching all the different exciting things that you can start off with your client-base. Plus, on top of that, they can become more revenue models and they don’t have to be massive revenue models as in you don’t have to charge a time-based a lot of money to start to make good money for yourself because of the way that it’s been structured. This use … as your platform and to be able to put the likes of internet of things and the likes of AI which is Artificial Intelligence. For example, I watch them to actually start do predictions on what you can do and can’t do it with your patient. For example, you can have a snapshot of everyone of certain demographic of age, hair colors, or what sort of aged care health you can actually apply to those people. And then really getting smart and those ones that are already using it. I’m … to see not an increase in revenue but also an increasing terms of … and are more interested in the aged care offerings. There’s a lot more excitement around it than just that cloud platform, in how to use it and how can you benefit from both your business and for your clients.

W: Now I’m hoping today Andrew that we’ve stimulated a little bit of interest among some of our listeners to say “Yes and there’s something here for me.” How the people get in touch with you if they want to learn more?

A: There’s twofold. They can either give me a call directly. Alternatively they can jump on the internet and they can find us under itoncloud.com and there are some contacts, and our phone numbers on it. My mobile number is 410814921. But the rest of our numbers are actually on the internet and we’d love to hear from them and then explain how they could benefit from it.

W: Let me just give people a chance to get their pencils ready and I’ll give those numbers again cause I get into trouble all the time for not giving people enough warning. The telephone number was 0410 814 921 and the URL on the web is www.itoncloud.com. You can find contact details on their web. We’ll also have a transcript to this conversation including those details on our website at www.hpr.fm. Andrew, it’s been a pleasure talking to you this morning. I do thank you for your time.

A: Likewise and all the very best.

W: Thank you very much. You are listening in the Health Professional Radio. If you’ve missed my conversation with Andrew Tucker, the CEO of IT on Cloud, we do have as I just mentioned, the transcript on our website. You can also listen to the podcast on iTunes or SoundCloud. My name is Wayne Bucklar, you are listening to Health Professional Radio.